Overlooked (or forgotten) Games

Another great thing about Faxanadu -- the music. It has some really nice tunes.

I had some other old PC games pop into mind -- basically the old Apogee/ID 2D games. Commander Keen, Duke Nukem (2D!), Hocus Pocus.

Great times. I think I saw Keen available on Steam, which means it's probably available on other PC platforms...

This past Friday I actually played through Faxanadu again. Mainly because my friend's Plex server was taken down indefinitely by the owner, leaving my broke self without entertainment.

Looking back, without the nostalgia, pure gameplay, 28 years later - It was too short. After having really developed my eye-hand coordination over the years, mastering the horrendous jump-arcs of olden' times, overall the game is easy. Games in that era relied on those jump arcs to increase the difficulty. It also had a major reliance on backtracking in order to make the game seem three times longer than it is. I was thinking back before, when I suggested this game, and I remembered this long epic quest. I remembered slaying dragon men with huge "Gunhead"-like heads and zombies that seemed to scratch their butts as they walked (no, really - play the game and watch them). Nope. Another reason I'm going to have to be critical is the bad "level management" of the game. Before, you wanted to keep your EXP low and your GP high, this due to the necessary Wingboots that actually give less time as you level-up. But leveling up is going to happen if you are trying to get GP, which you actually need a lot of if you want to keep your equipment strong and, more importantly, afford the multitude of keys you'll need. These can all be racked up to 'game length' and 'mechanics', though. For a game of that era, it may have had very little replay value (I beat it in about two hours), but what it did have was inspiration.

I say this because it actually had great stage design. It wasn't too difficult, but it wasn't too easy either. All in all it was very fluid, and the tilework was great. I think it had a lot to do with the layers. At the time, this was a pretty new concept, and the only popular game from that period -that comes to mind immediately- that used it was Super Mario Bros. 3. I'm sure others did, I just can't seem to think of them. Enemies could seemingly hide, and in the mist stage of the game it served as a great obstacle. Enemy design was even great. It may not have had the diversity of Persona or Castlevania when it comes to creatures of lore, BUT what was there... it fit. Especially with a lot of Giger and Lovecraft elements in the mist. I have a major love-hate relationship with that stage, as you can probably tell. The music was also well composed for an NES game, it all being complementary to the stages. Especially once you exit the elf town and begin your descent up the world tree. That track is very memorable, and while repetitive it wasn't tiring.

Anyway, that's a brief retrospect-review. It may not have much replay value outside of the second playthrough, but I think you can definitely see the influence it may have had on future games if you pay attention.

Bumping this up to spread awarness of a damn good PS4 release that seems to have flown under the radar due to combination of insufficient promotion and visuals that make it seem, at a glance, seem unworthy of the price asked.

The game in question is called N++ and is a hard as nails platformer with high emphasis on momentum usage. The concept is simple. You play as a ninja with great acrobatic skills that come at a cost of natural lifespan of a minute and a half. You need to spend that time beating five levels full of various dangers (from mines, to drones, to various turrets, to unsafe landing angles, all of them deadly) while collecting as much gold placed around the level as possible (since it's the only way of increasing your timelimit at 2 second gain per piece picked up). The levels are made to fit wholly on one screen but are really, really well crafted, and there is a ton of them - currently over 1000 levels for solo play and almost as much for coop and racing (local only sadly). On top of that the game comes with an inbuilt level editor (which sees much use in hands of fans), and the developers are, to my knowledge, still planning on adding more content (there were talks of another 1.5k levels total and more play modes) and want to make a Steam port although I imagine with low amount of sales the game seems to be getting and a loss of a programmer this might not come fast (if at all :/).

For the record the game originally was a flash game (and if you want to take a closer look on how the game plays you can find the free flash version here. The levels in PS4 version are mostly new although there is a selection of best "legacy" levels included) and prior to N++ there was a XBLA verson called N+. Also, have a random Youtube video of one of the levels in game as a showcase:



So to sum it up: good platformer, not enough exposure. If you have PS4 and like platoformers maybe look at the flash version and consider if you'd like to support the PS4 one, if not then perhaps you can spread awarness to some friends who are into this sort of game. Crying shame to see it flop.

On one hand learning that PSTV is cheapo-cheap moves it from "eh I have Vita already" to "hey, I could play Vita games on big screen with a proper controller" territory on other... I am worried. I mean that's what, about eight times cheaper than Vita was? How can PSTV be so cheap - does removal of screen and buttons really cut the production cost so much?

Yeah I actually went and picked up a PSTV today after checking that all Atelier games and Dragon's Crown are compatible with it in EU. 720p on 1080p monitor looks kind of eh but for being able to use a proper controller to play? Gladly pay the price.

And +1 on that Marathon reccomendation, only played 1 and 2 thus far but they were great. They're more than Doom-style FPS I'd say - yeah there is action aplenty but they also come with Bungie-style convoluted and mysetrious plot that has people speculating to this day.

"P.S. If things around here aren't working, it's because I'm laughing so hard."
- Durandal

Battle of olympus, its an action platformer that id never heard of till a friend mentioned it, got some ninja gaiden bird jumps later in the game and the difficulty spikes in the maze, but its pretty fun to play

Thank you for linking that song. Just... amazing.

Is there anyone else here who remembers this game?